[Graym]

Originally Posted by Galacticus [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I would like to hear how casters casted spells at all in pvp if they got interrupted so easily.

I think your also not factoring channeling skill, and the higher you got that skill, the more hits you could take and still complete a cast.

Everything we are talking about has to do with channeling. In fact the lack of channeling is why pure melee were very routinely interrupted with a single hit if they tried to cast an item spell like Crystallized pumice. As for how casters casted spells, it depends on the class they are playing against. A slow hitting class like a Paladin or a Shadowknight is not going to be able to push interrupt anywhere near the success rate of a fast hitting melee class like a Ranger or Rogue. That's why they get skills like Bash to compensate however those skills did miss.

The fact of the matter is though that casters were able to get off spells by taking advantage of terrain and losing the melee following them. All it takes is for the melee to get turned around for a few seconds so the caster can get the cast off without getting hit. Running around objects like trees, levitating off hilltops (the melee had to line up the Z axis EXACTLY underneath in order to land a hit if they didn't have levitate). Most importantly, in old school PVP players tended to ghost. That was the main way they got spells off. Everquest had a funky way of trying to predict where a player would be, and if you confused the client, your character would ghost and it would appear to your opponent you are running in a different direction. For a melee, that was horseshit because by the time it corrected the caster had the cast going and you wouldn't even get there in time to interrupt it.

Rangers had an advantage against ghosting in that tracking usually recorded the correct direction of the player as long as they stayed close. Sometimes if a player got too far away it would bug out tracking but not all the time. Tracking pets almost never bugged out either, even full on across zones. Some people were very skilled at sticking on a caster and some weren't. I ALWAYS had tracking running against the person I was fighting so even if I lost someone for a split second, I'd immediately get an update as to which direction they were in. On these emulators I'm sure the vast majority of people are cheating, but back in the day tracking was a big advantage for Rangers so to answer your question, casters got off spells by kiting the melee around and getting to a spot where they could cast without getting hit. Some casters were really good at it, just like some melee were really good at sticking on a caster and you could definitely tell the difference between the good players and the bad.

Originally Posted by Galacticus [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I could be wrong but i don't remember being pushed around because of Melee hits. I remember the only people who could move you were bards clerics pally and Druids who had spells that would move your character back a foot or two.

You are wrong, melee pushed characters just like it routinely pushed raid bosses into trees.

Originally Posted by Galacticus [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Levitate was used all the time. It never increased your possibility to have your spell interrupted. I played my necro with dmf and had it up all the time with no interupts or spell fails. Even on my Druid I would farm bat wings to cast levitate myself just because I thought it was cool looking to float around while I healed groups.

If it fucked with spells, no one would use it for pvp or pve.

Well, levitate does not cause a recalculation of the location if you don't move so if you simply float in place, it's perfectly fine. However, that's not what we are talking about here. The good part, and why people still use levitate is because it provides a distinct advantage over a melee class because it's harder to match up the Z axis to hit someone among other advantages. It's still worthwhile to use. I think the problem here is that people don't realize how PVP used to work back in the day. Casters rarely ever stood still and tried to channel a spell, only the worst of the worst on the server did that. The majority of the skilled casters were excellent kiters that used the terrain to their advantage and were good at getting their characters to ghost. Most of the casts they got off without getting hit, or only getting hit at the very end of the cast. The problem with VZTZ was that the interrupt rate was so far off from how it was on the live servers, and with the addition of crowd control spells like Root working, the gameplay was completely different then how it was on live servers.